The Polychromy of Longobard Stuccoes (original) (raw)
Journal of Art Historiography, 2011
The polychromy of medieval sculpture in Northern Europe is addressed in five of the articles in Circumlitio, which together form an important part of the editors’ project to bring the study of the coloured surfaces of sculpture out of the realm of technical reports and into the mainstream of sculptural scholarship. The five articles comprise surveys of techniques and materials (Harald Theiss) and of the field in general (Stefan Roller), and case studies of a major monument, Sluter’s Well of Moses at the Chartreuse de Champmol (Susie Nash), the raw material of the dyestuff madder (Dieter Köcher) and the reconstruction of the polychromed surface of a fourteenth century St George at the Germanisches Nationalmuseum,in Nuremberg (Arnulf von Ulmann). In his review, the author discusses some of the historiography of polychromy, examining in particular the treatment of Italian sculpture, whose study is not the focus of Circumlitio, giving context to the essays at hand within the wider field.
Colour in Late Antique Art: an Aesthetic Exploration of Polychromy
2023
Liz James for inviting me to contribute to the Byzantium on Display panel at the 21st Byzantine Congress in London in 2006 and address the aesthetics of marble and coloured stone. The text was published in extended form in Arte medievale, 2012 Valentino Pace for providing me with the opportunity to speak about the polychromy of the stucco saints in the Tempietto Longobardo, at the L'VIII secolo, un secolo inquieto convegno at Cividale in 2008, published in 2010 Marina Righetti for accepting a longer article on the Tempietto stuccoes, 'Colour and Context', in Arte medievale 2008 [2011]
White in Medieval Sculpture Polychromy – Iconography, Reception, Restoration
Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, 2019
This paper investigates various aspects of the polychromy of the Landsberg Madonna by Hans Multscher. First, partially polychromed ivory and marble sculptures are taken into consideration as possible models for the Landsberg Madonna’s specific polychromy. This study demonstrates that the material of these sculptures is meaningful in terms of both iconography and medieval color theory. It argues that the Landsberg Madonna imitates these materials by transforming their different white hues into polychromy, and that by doing so, white receives qualities of color. Finally, it shows that the 1961 – 1967 restoration of this sculpture followed an idealistic concept of unpainted pure substrate material, which disguises more than reveals the special status of the work’s original polychromy.
'The importance of colour on ancient marble sculpture'
This article explores the significance of paint and pigment traces for understanding the aesthetics and artistic composition of ancient marble architectural and statuary sculpture. It complements the pioneering technical and reconstructive work that has recently been carried out into classical polychrome sculpture by approaching the subject from the perspective of the cultural history of colour and perception in the ancient world. The study concentrates in particular on the art of imperial Rome, which at the present time is under-represented in the field. By integrating visual material with literary evidence, it first reviews some of the most important pieces of sculpture on which paint traces have survived and then assesses the significance of sculptural polychromy under four headings: visibility, finish, realism and trompe-l'oeil. Finally, it considers some of the ways in which polychromy can enrich our understanding and interpretation of the Prima Porta statue of Augustus.
Colour-coding the Roman toga: the materiality of textiles represented in ancient sculpture
Antike Kunst, 2017
Zusammenfassung: Die Toga wird als eines der symbolträchtigsten Klei- dungsstücke der Antike betrachtet. Wir kennen sie vor allem von Bildern und aus Schriftquellen. Ausgehend von diesem allerdings ziemlich lückenhaften Quellenmaterial wurde die Toga bezüglich Farbe, Dekor und Kontext, in welchem sie korrekterweise getragen wurde, in unter- schiedliche Typen aufgeschlüsselt. Obwohl solche Typo- logien von Kunsthistorikern und Archäologen gern als Hilfsmittel zur Darstellung ihrer Interpretation verwen- det werden, haben sie auch ihre Grenzen, gerade wenn es darum geht, zu verstehen, wie die Kleidung in der Antike wahrgenommen wurde. Die Autorinnen verschieben in ihrer Arbeit den Fokus auf die Oberflächentextur und die Überreste originaler Bemalung auf Togen oder Tuni- cen von Statuen und untersuchen die Farben als einen wichtigen, bisher oft übersehenen Aspekt in der Vermitt- lung des Dresscodes. Die Polychromie von Togastatuen verbunden mit dem aus antiken Textilien gewonnenen Wissen (zum Beispiel über Faserqualitäten und Färb- stoffe) führen zu einer Vielfalt von neuen möglichen In- terpretationen der antiken römischen Toga. Die Unter- suchung gelangt zu einer Reihe von neuen Informatio- nen, die inskünftig berücksichtigt und mit dem bisherigen Wissensstand zur antiken Toga verglichen werden müs- sen. Résumé: Considérée comme l’un des vêtements les plus emblé- matiques de l’antiquité, la toge nous est principalement connue au travers des sources écrites et iconographiques. Ces sources étant assez fragmentaires, la toge a fait l’objet d’une typologie basée sur la couleur, la décoration et les contextes sociaux dans lesquels elle était de mise. Bien que ces typologies élaborées par les historiens de l’art et les archéologues servent encore régulièrement à fonder leur interprétation, elles ont aussi leurs limites, surtout lorsqu’il s’agit de comprendre comment l’habillement était perçu dans l’Antiquité. Les auteurs de l’article ont concentré leurs efforts sur la texture superficielle et sur les restes de peinture originale conservés sur les toges et les tuniques des statues. Elles étudient les couleurs en les considérant comme un aspect important, souvent négligé jusqu’ici, de la médiation du code vestimentaire antique. Confrontée aux données issues des dernières avancées de la recherche sur les textiles antiques (par exemple sur les qualités des fibres et sur les colorants), la polychromie des statues de personnages en toge offre diverses possibi- lités nouvelles d’interprétation. L’article livre une série d’informations dont il conviendra désormais de tenir compte, en les comparant aux données sur la toge antique actuellement disponibles. (Traduction Jean-Robert Gisler)
Towards a 'Polychrome History' of Greek and Roman Sculpture
Ancient and medieval sculpture was normally painted and at times gilded. Today most of the original paint is lost, but scientific methods have made it possible to trace even slight remains of paint no longer visible to the naked eye. Hypothetical reconstructions of polychromy have been displayed at many recent exhibitions in Europe and the USA and documented in a growing number of publications. 1 While the proposed reconstructions obviously are open to discussion and revision, the colouristic 'revelation' invites further art historical considerations on perceptual and aesthetic aspects of sculptural polychromy. The history of ancient art therefore needs to be revised and rewritten in the light of new research. 2 In the ancient world, colour was an integral part of sculpture, and to combine sculpted and painted form was common practice throughout antiquity. In Egypt and the Near-East, sculpture in soft and hard stone and wood was normally painted. The Egyptian material still retains much colour, while Assyrian and Achaemenid reliefs tend to have suffered heavier losses. 3 This polychrome tradition was continued in the Greek and Roman world. Since marble is a fine and expensive material, it may surprise modern viewers that the antique artists chose to cover it wholly or partly with paint. But in Greece, the terms chros and chroma embrace the 1 Recent publications include: Vinzenz Brinkmann and Raimund Wünsche, eds, Bunte Götter.
In the last decade or so there has been steadily growing interest in determining the original appearance of ancient polychromed sculpture and architectural decoration. As a result, there have been a number of collaborative efforts on the part of scholars of classical antiquity, scientists, and digital computer artists. Technological advances in the testing of marble surfaces to detect even the most microscopic traces of ancient pigments or gilding have advanced our knowledge of ancient polychromy considerably. The interest in ancient polychromed marble is also evident in the increased number of papers and posters presented at our ASMOSIA conferences in recent years, expanding and complementing our study of the use of colored stones for ancient sculpture and architecture. The examination of ancient polychromy has resulted in a number of traveling museum exhibitions on this subject, with ancient sculptures still bearing traces of color being displayed next to painted plaster casts of the same objects. For the general public, long used to the purity of 18th and 19th century neo-classical white marble sculpture and modern plaster replicas of ancient sculpture, the display of such painted casts in these shows has come as a shocking surprise. In my paper, I shall not only consider some of problems and questions involved in the study and recreation of ancient polychomatic sculptures but also question the wisdom of using painted plaster casts for didactic purposes, especially in public museum exhibitions. I shall discuss as well some of the recent attempts, including my own, to colorize a marble portrait of Caligula in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen, a work that -- along with polychromed marble copies -- has been one of the more interesting objects displayed in these traveling exhibitions on colorized ancient sculpture.
Parergon & Remediation: Fictive Frescoes in Pandino Castle
MPhil Dissertation, 2022
Built in the mid-fourteenth century as a hunting lodge by the arguably despotic Bernabo Visconti and his wife Regina della Scala, the interior of the Castello Pandino is almost totally painted in illusory decorative frescos. Fictive marble, mosaic, windows, curtains, and metal fixtures dominate the building, with very few figurative paintings extant. Illusory frescoes like these have long been dismissed as simply "ornamental" however they may hold surprising insights into the philosophy of fourteenth-century visual culture. This dissertation is an exploration of these fictive wall paintings, their context within late-medieval Visconti visual culture, their aesthetic links to antiquity, and ultimately an investigation into what happens when the parergon eclipses the ergon.
Looking at Colour on post-Antique Sculpture
2011
As Alex Potts points out in his essay, ‘Colors of Sculpture’, ‘all sculpture is colored, in a literal sense’.1 Yet, despite the fact that the addition of colour to objects as well as its presence as an inescapable fact of sculptural media makes imperative its inclusion in any consideration of sculptors’ intentions and the meaning of their work, Amanda Claridge is right to note in her review,2 that polychromed sculpture has been given short shrift in the post-enlightenment settlement. The ideal of monochrome sculpture, often associated primarily with Winckelmann, was first articulated with real philosophical force by Johann Gottfried Herder and held such sway throughout the later eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and, more importantly, throughout the formative years of art history as a discipline, that polychromy was largely removed from the discussion and the predominance in sculptural taste and scholarship of form over colour was seldom deemed worthy of comment. Although the colo...
The British Museum Technical Bulletin 4, 2010
This contribution presents recent work on an important Roman marble head of the mid-second century ad from the collection of the British Museum (1884,0617.1). The head was found on the Esquiline Hill in Rome in 1884 and soon after its discovery was acquired for the British Museum. Unusually, it retained extensive traces of its original polychromy, including otherwise rarely preserved skin pigments. Ever since the German scholar Georg Treu published the sculpture in 1889, it has played a significant part in the discussion of ancient sculptural polychromy and in particular the question of whether or not the flesh parts of marble sculptures were originally painted. However, early doubts about the authenticity of the pigment traces led some twentieth-century scholars to question the authenticity of the sculpture as a whole.
When Colour tells a Story. The Polychromy of Hellenistic Sculpture and Terracottas
In: V. Brinkmann – O. Primavesi – M. Hollein (Hrsg.), Circumlitio. The Polychromy of Antique and Medieval Sculpture (München 2010) 240-257.
When we look at ancient sculpture we often find ourselves in front of a masterpiece in white, fine-crystalline marble. We prize its luminous whiteness, which draws our gaze to it, and its form, on which we are able to concentrate all the better because of the work’s monochromy. As this contribution will show, the creation of Hellenistic sculpture did not involve form alone, but included the provision of further detail by means of polychrome additions. These additions enrich the object and provide the viewer with more information. In other words, colour tells a story. To give insight into this practice, a definition of what is meant by polychromy and a description of the polychrome appearance of Hellenistic sculptures and smallscale terracottas will be provided in the following. The focus will then turn to two examples that shed light on the function of the polychrome additions.
Il colore nel decoro dei monumenti tardoantichi e il vetro: il caso di S. Vitale a Ravenna
M. Uboldi, S.G. Lerma, M. Vandini (a cura di), La multidisciplinarietà nella ricerca sul vetro. Atti delle XX Giornate Nazionali di Studio (Ravenna, 18-19 maggio 2019), 2022
This paper addresses the meaning of colors in late antique art and particularly in the 6th century, approaching the subject through a case study: the apse mosaics of San Vitale in Ravenna. Ravenna offers an extraordinary observatory, not only because of its great late antique heritage, but mainly as here is the mosaic that conveys the colors, a mosaic mostly made of glass tesserae. As the monumental mosaics of Ravenna have been extensively studied using archaeometric and scientific methodologies, an art historical approach can benefit of information otherwise unavailable. Therefore, this paper investigates the use of colors at San Vitale from a material perspective to understand the way in which they acted within a precise communication code and were used to create meanings.